OVERVIEW

This wiki was created for our EDEL 561 course, Process of Curriculum Development at the University of Alberta. Our task was to create a presentation that examined the issues surrounding First Nations and Métis perspectives in Canadian curriculum, as well as issues surrounding Aboriginal student achievement in our schools. Through our research we discovered four themes for successful Aboriginal education and have chosen to structure our wiki around them. They are:

Respect for Land and Its People
Connections to Life and Experiences
Cooperative Learning and Collaboration
Storytelling

In addition to these 4 themes, we have created a page titled “Our Experiences”. We each discuss our experiences and successes integrating Aboriginal content and teaching/learning methods into our personal teaching contexts. We have also included a page with general resources on Aboriginal education and a page with links to provincial curriculum documents relating to Aboriginal education.

This project is intended to introduce readers to Aboriginal perspectives that should be considered in curriculum. Although many curricula make an attempt to incorporate Aboriginal perspectives, there is still a lot of work to do. This overview page identifies some of the issues that Aboriginal youth are currently facing in today's schools. It is important to recognize these issues in order to best prepare our students for the future. Our goal is to encourage curriculum writers to incorporate Aboriginal content and ways of knowing into the full spectrum of curriculum. The hope is the more that Aboriginal students are able to interact with the curriculum, the greater their successes will be in school and beyond.

Before you begin, please note that the term "Aboriginal" represents First Nations, Metis and Inuit people. Though there are three main groups, there is a huge variety of culture and languages not only throughout Canada, but within each province.